A bitter, dark smell clung to the damp stone walls. Darren could hear the echo of his own breath, slow and shallow, as he strained against the ropes that bound his wrists. The chill from the underground seeped into his skin, but it was the silence that was strangling him.
No sound but the occasional scrape of a rat or the distant, muffled thud of something moving below. His heart was heavy, every beat reminding him that he was trapped—caught.
He had been walking for hours, lost in some forgotten, half-buried part of the city when they found him. They came out of the cracks, from under the ground, like hungry things, dragging him into their lair before he had a chance to scream. They didn't speak, didn't need to. The dark was their language.
Now he was on his knees, the rough stone floor pressing into his skin. He couldn't see much; his eyes had adjusted, but it was impossible to make out any clear shape in the vast, damp cavern. The only light came from a faint fire in the corner, the sickly glow revealing twisted faces—faces he couldn't ever unsee.
They were humans, once, maybe. Now they were nothing more than skin and bone, their eyes wide and empty, their bodies strange with marks of the underground.
They surrounded him, sitting in a loose circle, watching him like vultures, whispering to each other in a language that tasted of iron and decay. Darren's stomach turned as he watched their eyes flicker over his body, drawn to the movement of his chest, the pulse in his neck.
"Please," he whispered, but the words felt foreign, lost before they could even leave his lips. His throat was raw from the struggle. His mouth was dry. They didn't answer.
One of them—an old woman, or something that once was—hobbled forward. She reached out with thin fingers and placed them on his forehead. He flinched, but she didn't pull away. The skin was ice cold.
Her hand lingered a moment longer than it should have. The cold stung as it crawled across his skin, like it was sinking into him.
"Not yet," she muttered, pulling her hand back. Then she nodded to the others, and a few of them scuttled away, disappearing into the darkness.
Darren's pulse spiked. He pulled against the ropes again, but there was no hope. The knots were tight. His arms ached. Panic crawled up his throat, but he shoved it back down. They would kill him. He knew that much. They'd already decided. They just had to wait, savor it, maybe. The fear, the struggle.
They were going to eat him.
The thought twisted in his stomach.
One of the others, a man with a scarred face, moved forward. His steps were slow, almost ceremonial. He stood in front of Darren, his face unreadable, his eyes black holes in the flickering light. Darren opened his mouth to say something, but the words died before they left him.
The man reached down and grabbed Darren's jaw, forcing him to look up. "You're for Him," the man rasped. His voice was rough, like gravel scraping across bone. "You'll feed Him. He needs you."
The words didn't make sense. There was no "Him." No god. Just a group of people who had lost their humanity to hunger and desperation.
The man's fingers tightened, pressing against Darren's face until it hurt. The darkness behind him seemed to grow, pulling at his mind, warping his vision. He couldn't breathe right. It was suffocating him, like the space around him had shrunk.
"Please," Darren choked out again. "Please... don't."
But the man wasn't listening.
Another figure came from behind Darren, a woman with skin pulled tight over bone. Her voice was like paper tearing. "It's time," she hissed. She knelt beside him, holding something in her hand—sharp, glinting in the low firelight. The blade was small, almost delicate, but Darren knew what it was for. It didn't matter how delicate it looked.
His heart raced, but there was nowhere to go.
The woman raised the knife. Darren tensed, waiting for the pain, for the cut that would spill his blood. But the woman didn't strike. Instead, she held it over his chest and stared at him. A slow, sick grin stretched across her face.
"Not yet," she said again, in a voice so calm it made his skin crawl.
The others murmured in agreement, their voices blending into one low hum, like a chant. Darren couldn't make out their words. It was all just noise, like his mind was swimming in static. He closed his eyes, desperate to block it out, but it was useless.
Then the floor shook.
It wasn't much at first—just a rumble, like distant thunder—but it grew. The air shifted, the ground vibrating beneath him. The fire flickered, and for a moment, the dark figures around him seemed to waver in and out of focus. A loud crash echoed through the cavern, followed by the sound of something heavy dragging across stone.
The humans stopped.
Their eyes snapped to the darkness, their faces empty and hungry, but not for him.
Something was coming.
Darren had a moment, a split second, to gather his thoughts. His heart pounded in his chest. Whatever was out there in the dark was more terrifying than anything he had imagined. And yet, it felt like a chance—his chance.
He pulled against the ropes again, his wrists raw from the friction, but they didn't give. He jerked his arms until his muscles burned. The sound of dragging stopped, replaced by low whispers, like voices in the dark. The air became colder. His breath fogged.
The silence stretched.
Then, the screams began.
They were like animals, wailing and begging, shrill and broken. Darren twisted his head, desperate to see, to understand what was happening, but all he saw was the firelight dancing against the walls. Shadows shifting, moving in ways they shouldn't. The humans around him didn't react. They were still, unmoving, eyes locked in the direction of the noise.
And then something grabbed him.
It was fast, sudden. Cold hands clamped around his legs, dragging him, tearing him from the ground. Darren screamed, thrashing, but there was no escape. He felt something sharp tear through his flesh, the burning sting of pain as he was pulled through the dark.
The world around him spun, became a blur of darkness, broken only by the faint flicker of the fire and the distant sounds of... something worse. The screams, his own now mingling with theirs, faded.
The last thing he heard was the sound of something heavy, something ancient, moving through the dark. It had been waiting.
And Darren, like the others before him, was nothing more than meat to it.